


Box Jockeys

by Space (aussieosbourne)



Category: Original Work
Genre: AIDS crisis, Burnout & Compassion Fatigue, EMS, Families of Choice, Gallows Humor, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Medical Jargon, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, Paramedics & EMTs, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, informal as shit and written like a trashy livejournal blog post, protag is a sarcastic prick, setting is late 80s-early 90s
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-20 14:52:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13148997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aussieosbourne/pseuds/Space
Summary: Specific content warnings will appear in the notes on individual chapters. If there is anything else you think I should tag for, please let me know. Be safe and take care, everyone!





	1. Cleetus

**Author's Note:**

> Specific content warnings will appear in the notes on individual chapters. If there is anything else you think I should tag for, please let me know. Be safe and take care, everyone!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: suicidal ideation/attempt (non-explicit but treated somewhat lightly), domestic abuse mention, some emetophobia squick

It’s 4:17 in the morning. My partner is asleep on the stretcher, snoring like a jackhammer, and I’m halfway through my fourth cup of coffee — kinda cold, because our last call came in the moment we left the 7-Eleven and I didn’t quite like the idea of burning my entire esophagus just to get my fix. I chug cold coffee like a man dying of thirst might chug from a canteen: ravenously, and with little pride. We’ve still got three hours left in our shift, and I’m not spending it any less caffeinated than I absolutely have to.

Ever since my very first job cashiering at a Chinese takeout when I was fifteen — and no, before you ask, nobody knew or cared that I wasn’t Chinese — I’ve been blessed with the unique privilege of working on Christmas. Never mind the fact that I don’t spend time with my family on Christmas anyway; regardless of profession, affiliation, or familial status, there’s something inherently depressing about having to work during the holidays. Maybe it’s the pitying looks. Maybe it’s the prospect of having to work over some 50-something cardiac arrest in front of his mortified spouse and children, or the very real possibility that we’d have to scrape Santa off the floor of the strip mall because he’s too drunk for jail (again). I don’t know. But I tell you what — that sweet, sweet time and a half sure softens the blow.

We’ve already run two domestic calls tonight, which isn’t particularly unusual. Something about all that holiday cheer makes people a little punchy — which I could almost relate to, I guess, but I’m not the type of rancid human garbage to turn it on my nonexistent wife and kids. My punchiness is usually restricted to the vivid imaginations of my mind, as I watch the coppers cart away some upper-middle-class business weasel in festive, dickstained boxers... but I digress. The first one was a refusal, wedged in between a fall and some junkie with incarceritis. (“You’re arresting me? Suddenly my chest hurts!”) The second was worse: a minor wrist break, some contusions, a swollen eye, the works. She seemed a little dazed and wasn’t telling us anything — but after a little convincing, she decided not to sign the refusal, so off we went. I’m hoping that’s the extent of the bullshit for the night, but if the past five Christmases are anything to go by, my guess is... mmmmprobably not.

I tongue the last few drops of coffee from the mouth of the cup, steel myself for the inevitable, and go available.

On cue, tones drop. I hear my partner jolt awake with the mighty snort of a wild boar. Caffeinated to the teeth, I cackle, rolling out from behind the dumpster while he stumbles into the cab.

The call comes in as an “unknown medical,” which is usually the moment we know shit’s about to get weird. (Last unknown medical we ran was probably the messiest call I’ve ever done. I ended up having to burn that uniform... but that’s a story for another day.) We fly.

The address takes us to a sunken sheet-metal trailer on the side of some bumfuck road in the woods. Note the use of the word “sunken” here: because of the sheer volume of trash and general debris climbing up the sides of the trailer, we wouldn’t have even been able to tell that there _was_ a trailer on the property if not for the two squad cars sitting in the yard.

Christmas music filters out through the open door alongside the gentle aroma of cigarette smoke and stale beer. The cop in the doorway looks a little pale, hair plastered to her forehead like she’s just puked out her last meal — I raise my eyebrows at her, and she gives me a weary look that warns me not to ask questions I don’t want the answer to. That’s fair. I don’t ask. The other officer is a few feet inside the trailer, interviewing our patient — a mid-fifties man with a chest-length grey beard and a beer gut, like a goddamn hillbilly Santa Claus — who is sitting in a plastic lawn chair, smoking a cigarette. On first glance, I’m thinking, “Oh, great. Another bullshit call.” Then I see a four-inch-long handle sticking out of his chest. No blood, no outward signs of distress. Neat!

My partner, feathers thoroughly ruffled, asks what in the fresh hell makes this an “unknown medical.” The cops tell us they got here all of three minutes before we did and didn't have a chance to radio in details before we rolled up. Three minutes is plenty fucking time, I want to say, but I keep my mouth shut. They both look like the ink is still wet on their police academy acceptance letters. Whatever. I hate cops. The patient — we’ll call him Cleetus — is awake/alert and seems perfectly capable of speaking for himself, so I ask him instead. Turns out Cleetus called it in himself, surprised when the wound didn't kill him. (Me the fuck too, buddy!) I don’t think he mentions anything about an attacker, but it’s hard to tell. The dispatcher’s confusion suddenly makes more sense, on account of the fact that Cleetus has the dialect of a man whose gene pool doesn’t have a deep end.

There's not really much we can give him other than high-flow diesel. His vitals are fine, and he doesn't seem to be in much pain, though he protested quite a bit when I told him he couldn't have his cigarette in the rig. (“Can I dip?” “No.”) My partner sets to asking questions while we get him ready to move — medical history, have-you-taken-any-drugs-or-alcohol, yadda yadda. I peek at the knife. Steak, serrated. Holy shit.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Cleetus sniffs and snarls, baring all five of his teeth. “Don’t like Christmas.”

With a carefully unreadable face, my partner looks to the knife, to me in the driver’s seat, then back to Cleetus. “Were you trying to kill yourself?”

“Yeah, and I’d’a got away with it, too, if it wern’t for you meddlin’ kids.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. My partner shoots me a look of disapproval in the rearview as I try to restrain myself, tears streaming down my face. Cleetus, the smug bastard, is grinning like he just told his grandson to pull his finger and blasted that little fucker with the loudest, raunchiest pant-splitter he could muster.

Anyway, the guy codes halfway to the hospital. Merry Christmas, Cleetus.

0541\. We finally escape the hospital and clean up the rig. I drive in silence to our staging area, praying my Walkman’s batteries will last.

Right, I never actually introduced my partner. For a little perspective:

Tito is an absolute powerhouse of a medic. Ex-Navy sans the type-A personality, eight years of trauma experience, certs out the ass, plays a mean game of poker. I’d honestly be intimidated if he wasn’t such a sweetheart — he’s got that calm, easy manner that would make him a wildly talented peds nurse, but he chose shitty hours and an inferior paycheck simply because he’s addicted to the thrill. I trust this motherfucker with my _life,_ which is more than I can say for any of the other assholes I work with. (I say assholes affectionately, of course. Mostly.) We work exceptionally well together, enough so that they just gave up and started pairing us up every shift. Really, we should just move in together, at this point.

Right now, he’s slouched in the copilot’s seat in a position that can’t be comfortable, snoring in a way that makes me worried he might actually die. I don’t know if the ability to sleep on command Literally Anywhere came standard-issue when he joined the military or if it’s a skill he had to learn, but I envy him. It’s a quiet ride back, broken only by the occasional crackle of chatter on the radio.

At 0558, we get a call for a drunk guy at the Dunkin Donuts nearby. Tito’s awake now, squinting blearily out of the windshield. “Did we even stop?”

“Nope.”

“Well if he doesn't need an ambulance now, he will when I get done with him.”

I silently agree.

As we’re pulling into the Dunkin Donuts parking lot, I spot a stumbling figure across the road. Correction: I see a figure stumbling across the road into oncoming traffic, in our general direction.

Tito leans over the dash. “Oh shit, are we about to witness manslaughter?”

“Probably. Come on, let's get him before we gotta pick him off the road in pieces.”

Why people are on the road at six in the morning on Christmas Day, I don't know. The guy trips over the median and windmills his arms to try to keep his balance (resulting in a visual my mind compares to a velociraptor trying to take flight), and, as all objects in motion on this beautiful blue planet must eventually succumb to gravity, he topples over face-first in some poor sucker’s headlights. Tito lets off a string of no-goddamn-it-please-no-come-ON-I-don't-want-to-do-this-right-now, and grimaces in anticipation of the spray.

The car fishtails and screeches to a halt just short of flattening the guy's fingers. We both breathe a heavy sigh of relief.

Drunk guy's trying to haul himself off the ground in front of the horrified driver (to whom I offer a little salute of gratitude), apparently too drunk to know or care that he almost became dumbass paté. I'm already grabbing him by the collar by the time he gets on his feet, steering him toward the ambulance at arm’s length. This guy absolutely _reeks_ of alcohol. Like, I'm fairly certain he's sweating whiskey, if my nose is right. I wouldn’t want to be his liver right now.

In hindsight, I will one day see what my mistake was. But right now, the only warning I get is a low burbling roar.

Mistake: I take my eyes off the patient for half a second to say some stupid snarky remark to my partner.

Consequence: the guy linebacker-tackles me into the side of the ambulance.

We roll for a second, I take an elbow and a fist to the face, and I get him pinned under me by the time Tito realizes I'm not getting into the rig behind him. To be fair, it happened fast — couldn't have been more than four seconds from start to finish — but the guy rocked me pretty good, and I’m pissed at everything around (and under) me. Tito kneels to help me restrain him, using the new vantage point to check my face.

I spit blood on the asphalt, ears ringing. “Fuck took you so long?”

He’s worried. It probably doesn’t look nice. “You good? Can you see out of that?”

I tilt my head to let the blood run down my cheek without sacrificing my hold on his hands. “Yeah, it's not in my eyes yet. I've got him. Where the _fuck_ are the cops?”

“On their way.”

“Ugh.” I spit blood again. My cheek is starting to throb. “God, I fucking hate cops.”

“Hey. Look at me. Are you alright?”

“Check me out _after_ we get this guy processed.”

“Kaede, if—”

Beneath me, the guy heaves. I’ve got the good sense to move my knee before the growing pool of vomit touches my uniform, dragging the guy far enough out of his own fluids that he doesn’t aspirate in it. Any other time, I’d be thanking God that it’s more alcohol than anything else, but this time the smell of it turns my stomach in a way that it normally wouldn’t.

“Fuck. Tito, take him.”

He doesn’t ask questions, he just jumps on the dude’s back the second I’m clear. I round the back of the ambulance and retch. That’s... new.

The cops finally fucking arrive, and I’m still hunched over in the bushes behind the rig.

“What’s his problem?” I hear somebody say.

“Smelled you guys coming,” I shoot back, spitting blood and saliva and bile into the grass.

“Fuck you, Kaede.”

“No thanks, I don’t like pork.”

Anyway. I get my shit together, eventually. Takes me a few minutes to stop salivating like a sick dog and unknot my stomach enough to stand up straight. I figure I might as well be useful and help them strap Drunkie onto the stretcher, but when I turn around, Tito’s walking over to meet me.

“I’m good.”

“No, you’re not. You look like shit.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t get sick from this kind of shit. You’re not squeamish. Something’s clearly not fine.”

That’s... fair, I guess. I let him pull me into the back of the rig. He sits me in the jump seat and kneels in front of me, prodding at my split brow.

“What happened with Drunkie?” I ask through clenched teeth. It’s starting to sting.

“Sobered up a bit after he puked. Cops are watching him until the other unit gets here.”

“The other— you called for another unit? Get that shit outta my eyes,” I snap, batting away his penlight.

“You’re concussed,” he says, patiently. “You can’t drive like this, and you can’t provide care, so. Yeah. I called another unit. You’ll thank me later.”

“Can I hate you in the meantime?”

He smiles. “You don’t hate me.”

“Fuck you.”

He grins wider. _Fuck_ him.

Four stitches, one CT scan, and one pissed off supervisor later, I finally get cleared to go the fuck home. They send me off with a bag of pills I could’ve bought at Walgreens and a headache the size of fucking Guatemala. I’ve still got a sour cocktail of alcohol/blood/vomit smell all over me and my caffeine high is way, way gone. It’s... nine? Whatever, the sun’s up and our shift was over hours ago. I’m not a happy camper. Merry fucking Christmas, I guess.

Tito insists on driving me home, even though my stubborn pride insists against it. He hangs out for a bit, watching trashy Christmas movies on the couch while I shower the work off my skin and hair. I come out an hour later with a towel on my head, and he’s got a gift-wrapped box on his lap. I narrow my eyes at him.

“You’d better not have.”

He grins, wiggling the box in my direction. “Come on, open it.”

I slump into the couch next to him, my limbs still too heavy — the pills took the edge off the headache, but everything is still slightly fucky. “Where were you even hiding this? Actually—” I hold up a finger to stop him, “Actually, you know what? Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

He cackles and yanks impatiently at the bow. “Open iiiiit.”

“I aaaam.”

I’m pretty sure he notices how clumsily I handle the wrapping paper, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He bounces his leg like an excitable child while I pry open the box.

Oh. Holy shit.

It’s a very, _very_ nice watch, one of the really fancy digital ones with all the buttons and extra functions and shit. I _really_ don’t want to think about how much he spent on it. He grins, nudging me with his foot. “Do you like it?”

I’m speechless. With no friends outside of work and a family that’s either absent or dead, I actually don’t remember the last time someone got me something for Christmas. I might’ve mentioned, like, _once_ that I needed a new watch, when mine started fucking up on me a couple months ago — God, he really does pay attention, doesn’t he?

My eyes actually start to sting a little. “I—yes. Holy shit, Tito, this is _really_ nice.”

“Good. Figured you were due for an upgrade.”

“You didn’t have to,” I insist, discreetly wiping my eyes. “I didn’t get you anything.”

He shrugs. “So?”

“So now I have to show you up.”

He laughs, loud and obnoxious and warm. “Merry Christmas, brother. Go get some sleep.”


	2. Between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: drug use mention, mild panic attack

You know that thing firewood does when it’s burning? Like, that sound the wood makes when it’s been freshly thrown on the fire, straining against its own expanding atoms before it finally cracks and pops? _That’s_ what the inside of my head feels like.

It takes me a minute to realize my phone is actually ringing, and it’s not just residual sensory input from the weird dream I just had. There’s still a lingering ripple of adrenaline coursing through my veins, and the faintest twinge of nausea, so it’s probably for the best that I can’t remember it. Blindly, I grope for the handset.

"Yeah?”

“Hey, you awake, buddy?”

I look at the clock: 7:26 PM. “Shit, am I late for work?”

“No, you’re fine. Remember, Gutierrez told you to stay home for a few days. You do know what day it is, right?”

“Yeah, it’s like... Tuesday, or something.”

“Nope, still Monday.”

“Oh. Shit, man, you had me scared for a minute there. I thought I slept through a whole day.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he says, and huffs a laugh. He sounds half asleep, himself. “Okay. Sorry for waking you up, man, I’m just checking on you.”

Takes a second to click: Right, I got concussed as shit last night. He’s checking to make sure I _can_ wake up. Feeling guilty, I ease up on the bitchy tone. “I’m okay. Thank you.”

“No problem, brother. Go back to sleep.”

It takes me a couple tries to put the phone back in the right spot with my eyes closed, but I manage. Later, I’ll thank him again. Right now, I take two pain pills, wash them down with a sloppy gulp of water, and pass the absolute fuck out.

I wake up halfway through falling out of bed: tangled in sheets, gasping for air, completely drenched in sweat. I can’t catch myself, so I just accept my fate and slump to the floor in a heap of bedding. If I try to untangle myself now (read: while I’ve still got a double shot of adrenaline knocking my heart against my ribs like a battering ram) I’m just gonna end up freaking out even more. So I sit there until I can control my breathing, and, just to give my mind something technical to focus on, time my heart rate on my watch until it registers as something other than a panic attack.

1:07 in the morning. What is that, like five hours of sleep? Good enough. I’m up.

I extricate myself from my cloth prison, put on my leg with numb, jerky hands, and take the crumpled bag of medication with me to the bathroom.

My face looks _bad._ I didn’t look at it last night, but it has to look worse now. Livid purple bruises across my cheekbone and up into my eye socket, flaky dried blood plastering strands of hair to my eyebrow, swollen in so many places that I almost don’t even recognize myself. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten my ass beat by a patient, and it’s far from the worst. However, it _is_ the first time I’ve gotten my ass beat by a tiny potbellied Italian man who was too drunk to find his ass with both hands. Normally I’d just smoke some pot and sleep off the embarrassment, but I’m out of weed and my last two attempts at sleep turned out badly enough to be a pretty strong deterrent against a third try.

Gingerly, I take some peroxide to the blood crusted in my stitches in an attempt to make myself look more human: it split right _under_ my eyebrow, because of course it fucking did, so I’ve gotta tilt my head to clean it without that bloody, bubbling mess dripping straight into my eyes. Mouthwash hurts like hell (like, I’ve been _stabbed_ before and this shit is Not Fucking Around) but the entire inside of my cheek is mangled where it got busted on my teeth, and I’ve seen what happens when that shit gets infected. I breathe through the pain until it stops burning. Rinse and repeat.

Okay. I’m fine. I take my antibiotics. I drink some water. I flex my fingers and stretch the knots out of my shoulders, reminding myself that it’s okay to relax now, and there’s nothing to get all wound up about. I’m _fine._

I call my ex.

It rings five times and clicks. “Uh... hello?”

Instant regret. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. “Hey. You busy?”

“Busy... sleeping, yeah. What time is it?”

I glance at the clock. “Uhhhh, y’know, don’t worry about that. Are you working tomorrow?”

“No. Is this a booty call?”

Ooh, ouch. He didn’t have to say it out loud. “Think of it as a work order.”

I can _hear_ him smirking on the other line. “Need someone to come clean your pi—”

“Okay, yeah, that’s... enough. Thank you. Are you coming over or not?”

A deep sigh. “...Fine. Give me like 20 minutes.”

He lets himself in when he gets here, half an hour later with an armful of takeout. He puts the bags on the kitchen counter and drops his keys on the microwave like he still lives here.

“Thought you got rid of that key,” I say, watching him over the back of the couch.

“I did. You left the door unlocked.”

“Oh.”

I can see him smiling in the half-dark of the kitchen. “Get anything for Christmas?”

“Uhhh, does a concussion and four stitches count as a Christmas present?”

Backlit from the light in the entryway, he freezes. “Jesus fucking Christ, Kaede, what the fuck happened to your face?”

“Oh, I also got a watch.”

By the time I look back up, he’s already leaning over the back of the couch to get a better look. (At my face, not at the watch.) “Fuck, dude, that’s _really_ bad.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. God, are you okay?”

I shrug. “I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I’m fine. It’s whatever. Hurts a little when you touch it, but they sent me home with a prescription, so I can’t really feel shit right now.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re not high, are you?”

“Like that ever stopped you before.”

“Kaede—”

“No, I’m not fucking high, okay? Look, yes, I’m medicated. I’m in _pain._ But they haven’t found a way to get high on Tylenol yet, so I’m still _unpleasantly_ sober. Okay? Is that good enough? Do I need, like, a permission slip or something?”

He looks at me for a long time. “What’s really going on?”

“Nothing’s _going on,_ I’m having a bad night and I just want to get bent over a table and railed within an inch of my life.”

“At two in the morning?”

“Is that a crime? What, you’ve never—” Judging by the look on his face, he’s already tired of my games. I just had a really good one-liner prepared, too. “Look, you don’t have to stay. Okay? I’m not forcing you to be here, I just—”

“Nightmares again?”

I bite my tongue. “...Yeah.”

“You wanna—”

_“Don’t_ ask me if I wanna talk about it. There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t even remember what it was, I just woke up feeling like shit and I want to get my mind off it.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I didn’t call you so we could talk about feelings.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, you never were very good at that, were you?”

Impatiently sliding my hands up his arms, I pull him down. “You know what I am good at, though?”

“Dodging questions?” he mumbles against my lips.

“Among other things, yeah.”

Maybe it’s not fair to him. I do wonder about that, sometimes, whenever I call him over — he always did care for me more than I cared for him, but he _was_ the one who cheated on me, so forgive me if I don’t feel too bad for using him like this. He doesn’t get offended when I don’t let him stay the night, and he doesn’t try to call me when he gets home. It’s easy, it's familiar, and it’s enough.

I clean up, smoke a cigarette on the lanai in that first glimpse of morning sun, and sleep like the dead.


End file.
